National Topics

The National Museum of Nature and Science on Tuesday added Lion Corp.’s enzyme-based laundry detergent Top to a list of important historical materials that have had an impact on Japanese lives and culture. Top, which first hit the market in 1979, was among 16 ...

Treated water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant is safe to be released under controlled circumstances into the Pacific Ocean, according to an independent Tepco adviser. “It is much better to do a controlled release in my view than to have an accidental ...

Measles is spreading fast among workers at Kansai International Airport, with 32 airport workers in their 20s and 30s found to have contracted the viral disease since mid-August, officials said. In addition to the 32, three other medical workers who dealt with measles patients ...

The health ministry is warning travelers going to high-risk areas to stay alert after researchers said Friday that at least 2.6 billion people living in parts of Africa, Asia and the Pacific are at risk of Zika infection. Some of the most vulnerable countries ...

An 82-year-old woman died of food poisoning Thursday caused by the O-157 strain of E. coli bacteria at a nursing care home in the Tokyo suburb of Hamura, the metropolitan government said. The case is said to be the first O-157-linked death in Tokyo ...

A health ministry panel on Wednesday called for a ban on smoking indoors in public spaces, including restaurants. In a report, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry linked passive smoking to a range of deadly diseases, saying designated smoking spaces only harbor the problem ...

Japan, China, Taiwan and other countries have agreed to make an effort to curb chub mackerel catches in the northern Pacific Ocean, amid growing concern at overfishing by Beijing. On Friday, during the three-day meeting in Tokyo of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission, its ...

Earthquake scientists in Japan have detected a rare and faint deep-Earth tremor known as an S wave microseism, tracing it to a distant but powerful storm in the North Atlantic. The findings, published in the U.S. journal Science on Thursday, could help experts learn ...

Japan’s space agency has announced that it will release Kenya’s first satellite — for no fee — from its Kibo laboratory at the International Space Station. The move, announced Thursday, is expected to take place sometime in fiscal 2017, which begins next April. Deploying ...

Over half of Japan’s parents now feed newborns nothing but breast milk — the first time this has been observed in three decades, according to a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey. “Efforts to promote breast-feeding have paid off,” a ministry official said Wednesday. ...

Samoa, with its string of beautiful islands and coral atolls in the South Pacific, is attracting more than just tourists these days. Scientists are heading there, too. The nation holds the uneviable position of being No. 1 in the world for obesity. Among Samoan ...